


send it farther on

by nextgreatadventure



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-23
Updated: 2014-01-07
Packaged: 2017-12-21 02:28:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/894733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nextgreatadventure/pseuds/nextgreatadventure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary Margaret notices rather quickly that it is <i>Emma</i> Regina has been staring at.</p>
<p>(post 2x22 'and straight on 'til morning'.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i've been referring to this story as 'gay fairytale cruise' since i started writing it but also i have referred to it as 'the story i wrote just to fetishize the stroking of emma's beautiful princess hair'. so there's that.
> 
> everyone has been writing post s2 adventures to neverland and and i've only had the pleasure of reading a couple of those, so basically what i'm trying to say is that i'm sorry if you read here what you've already read elsewhere. i'm just writing the story i wanted to read. :) i've got the next part about a third of the way written, so hopefully posting this will light a fire under my ass.
> 
> lastly, kristen has been the best person ever, reading this story and giving me all sorts of notes and wonderful nudges and i just love her a lot and wanted to give her my thanks here. one time dee read this too and gave me lovely notes, LOVE U DEE.
> 
> long live this pairing, guys. nothing important happened this week.

\--

 

_someday my pain will mark you_

_harness your blame_

_and walk through_

\--bon iver

 

\---

 

 

It has been days of wandering through dark oceans like spilt blue ink, days of following blindly the cartograhical lines of Gold's blood spell. They aren't _lost_ , not necessarily, it's just that they keep missing their mark over and over again because that damn globe can't seem to focus yet. They have no way in. And it's not like they've got much _choice_ in the matter. They just have to wait it out and hope that sooner rather than later, the spell finally gets a lock, makes a way, lets them through, because that globe is all they have right now besides each other.

 

It might be Mary Margaret who notices first, the way Regina's boil has slowed to a simmer (even in the face of this new crisis), the way her eyes are no longer hard, unfathomable onyx, but the soft black of artists' charcoal. They no longer strike and swallow things whole. They just stare, softly blending into something lighter, something that feels more like that moment they met on a hillside a lifetime ago. Regina is still steeped in sadness, though. She may never escape that particular curse (one unimaginable weight lifted, one gained).

Mary Margaret notices rather quickly that it is _Emma_ Regina has been staring at. Emma is light and dark in the same way Regina is, the sort of contrast that comes from a whole lifetime and not from one cowardly betrayal like her own. She isn't sure how she feels about two such important women in her life (for vastly different reasons) sharing something that integral, but she supposes she gave up the right to Emma's intregality the moment she surrendered her as a baby.

So she notices. She notices how Regina follows Emma, who paces the deck lost and upset hour after hour after hour. _Regina_ , who follows _no one_ but blazes a hot fire of her own first, tearing any root or obstacle or family asunder that stands in her way. Regina who should despise Snow White's daughter, who could be _destroyed_ by Snow White's daughter.

Emma won't take much comfort from her mother, or her father, but she lets Regina linger at her elbow, once for an entire _evening_. Mary Margaret wishes she knew what it is they talk about, if they talk at all. She wishes she knew why Regina has begun to take in her daughter with such soft, soft eyes and why Emma can stand to be around Regina for longer than she can stand to be around her own mother right now. The loss of Henry is the best explanation for this sudden, silent shift, but Mary Margaret doesn't think that it is the only explanation. 

 

 

 

Hook keeps telling them, in the spirit of full disclosure (because adventures the likes of this one are best set out upon with all participants fully disclosed): you can never really _leave_ Neverland.

"You obviously got outta here," Emma says. 

"How." It isn't a question. Regina says the word like she says the word "no" when someone asks her a stupid question. 

Snow and Charming blink and say nothing. They've done a lot of that since climbing onto this ship. Gold broods from his perch near the helm.

"I made a very selfish deal."

Regina and Emma exchange the same grim look.

"We'll revisit this conversation _after_ we've rescued Henry," Emma decides. 

Regina steals another look. Emma looks so very tired. 

 

 

Emma knows that it is late even though she can't even tell what time it is or which way is up anymore because the water is black blue and the sky is black blue and the stars, the stars are fucking _everywhere_. All watches and clocks aboard have inexplicably stopped keeping time and there doesn't seem to be a general bedtime for anyone anymore or even a general rising time.

The six of them wander like ghosts on a ghost ship in ghostly waters. It doesn't seem like _anything_ alive exists out here, and yet each and every time they consult the globe, there it is: Neverland. A tiny island. Tiny dots representing hundreds of living things, all squirming around inside the magic blood like organisms under a microscope.

They just need a way _in_.

Emma wrings her hands against the wooden ledge of the ship because she can't really sit still even in a non-anguishing situation. She raps her knuckles and kicks at the dusty floor.

"How are you, Emma?"

Emma starts. "Jesus," she says, taking the hand away from where it flew to her chest. "You're like Batman."

"Sorry," Regina rasps again, coming further out of the shadows. "I didn't mean to scare you."

Regina's hands are in her coat pockets and she looks a little less scary, a little more small and human this way. "I'm still about the same as you, I'd imagine." Emma turns back to the waves.

Regina sighs, and comes closer. 

"That good, huh."

They watch the star-studded black blue together for a little while.

"How's your head?" Emma turns slightly, watches Regina from the corner of her eye. The woman had taken a pretty considerable (admirable) beating back in Storybrooke, what with the torture by electrocution and then the whole apocalyptic trigger debacle. And the bunks on Hook's ship aren't exactly silk and down.

Regina just breathes in and out. "It's all right, thank you." Regina is staring dead ahead until all of a sudden she isn't, she is staring straight at Emma instead, and Emma darts her eyes quickly forward. "You--your magic--down in the mines..."

The hint of nervousness is what really gets Emma. She swings her eyes back again. She's never seen Regina trail off, never seen her glance away shyly, never seen her do anything that isn't made either of sharp edges or desperate, narrow curves.

"It did something to me," Regina tells her. "I haven't felt this good in days." 

The curious moment has passed and now it's sort of awkward again. "Well," Emma says. "You're welcome. I mean, I guess. I don't know." And now she's curious again. "Are you sure it was _me_?"

"Oh, positive." There is something breathless in Regina's low voice, something sudden and honest and begrudging. Like Regina didn't want to admit it, but the truth is too much to deny. It makes Emma's heart do... _something_. It makes her cheeks flush. It feels like an embarrassing compliment hanging out in the open between them.  


And then Regina starts murmuring again in that same voice and Emma's eyes have to snap shut.

"The magic inside of you, Emma, it's...unique. I've never...felt that."

Emma buries her head down into her coat collar. She wants Regina to stop talking. She wants to walk away. She wants to stay and ask what it felt like (if it felt anything like what Emma herself felt connecting to Regina--no, no--to the _trigger_ , to the _magic_ , in that moment).

(The problem is that Regina and her magic are one in the same, Emma knows that now whether she wants to or not, how magic is a life force branded by whoever wields it, and Emma _knows_ this, because connecting to that magic in the mines had felt like power and darkness and wounded desperation and the sadness was _crushing_ , the love was _obliterating_ , and she hasn't been able to get the taste of apples from her mouth ever since.)

Regina lays her gloved hands, one at a time, against the ledge beside Emma's like a peace offering.

"I think I'll call it a night," Emma says quickly. She isn't ready to talk about magic and what it does or doesn't create, how it does or doesn't make her feel, anymore tonight.  


Regina watches her walk away and wonders how she could possibly explain this, the way she feels so wholly marked by her son's mother. The way she feels softened, the way she despises it, how Emma wants space when Regina suddenly can't stop wanting to just... _touch_ her. 

Because Emma is good. The darkness inside of her doesn't even _matter_ because she will never succumb to it like Regina did, like Cora did, like Rumple did. Emma's magic is a bright white revelation and a beacon, and more even than that, Regina sees Henry and has _always_ seen Henry in every line of Emma's face and in every movement of her body. There is something about Emma that Regina aches for in the same (and altogether different) way she aches for her son, but her son is not here.  


So Emma leaves and Regina stays on the deck alone, listens to the gentle lapping of dark waves while her mind tries to form the words her mouth probably never will. 

 

 

 

Only when she doesn't know what else to do, who else to turn to, does Emma go to Mary Margaret. Tonight it was too much and not enough, this whole situation, the days that have passed with no progress and no regression, either. Just a complete halt, a standstill filled with debilitating worry and confusion and only a dash of hope that feels hopeless in comparison. It's too much and not enough.

Regina's eyes are too much and not enough because they are Henry's eyes, too. Because they were a family for the blink of an eye until they weren't. The things they say and the things they won't say are all too much and not enough. The things they won't even think.

Tonight Emma is falling apart but she'll be damned if she lets anyone say it out loud.

"Shh, honey."

Emma feels the tears prick hot in her eyes, anyway. Crying isn't really surrender, it's just a release that her body needs pretty badly. She feels better telling herself this.  


Her mother's hands are smoothing the long blonde hair gently down her back. Her voice is just as gentle. "We'll get there. We'll find him. We always do."  


The lull of the boat is ominous but here in Mary Margaret's arms, Emma feels a little less futile. Yeah, maybe they will find him. Maybe things will work out.

(Maybe they won't.)

Emma curls her fingers around Mary Margaret's knee and closes her eyes against everything that is wrong and everything that she cannot fix. She rests here for awhile.  


Mary Margaret hates their situation, but she cherishes each moment that passes with Emma asleep in her lap. She strokes her daughter's blonde hair back and back and back, trying hard to fill each small touch with love, to take away the hopelessness, to make up for every lost time and circumstance as all these brand new moments between them pass on by.

 

 

 

It feels even later when Regina looks up from her hands at the sound of the rooftop hatch creaking open and then closed.

It's quiet down here, it's quiet _everywhere_ but here it is just Regina, and the quiet, and the thoughts she pushes away.

Emma steps softly from the ladder. Regina blinks exactly once, big black eyes wide like an owl's in the dark of the creaking ship's belly.

"Hey," Emma says, finally.

"Couldn't sleep?" Regina asks lightly.

Emma hesitates. "Not really."

They stare and stare again and Emma looks away first, like she always does. She doesn't want to have to make up an excuse for being here. She doesn't want that. It would sound stupid and forced. 

For once, she is glad for Regina's new softness and for her silence and for the way she moves over on the bunk to make room.

They sit side by side, tensely, for what feels like far too long. Regina tries to breathe and remember what it felt like to hate Emma Swan, to not feel as indebted to her as she does in this painfully long stretch of silence between them. She tries to remember what it felt like to be a queen or a mayor or a daughter or a wife who was never enough, to struggle selfishly, to leave everyone else behind just to survive.

She has wanted a family for so long, she has wanted freedom and love and she has paid dearly for it. She has been trying in all the wrong ways and it has nearly killed her.

"My mom gets what it's like to lose a kid," Emma says finally, and even though the words are not intended to place blame, Regina feels them weigh heavy on her chest. "I just don't think she gets what it's like to _be_ a lost kid. She had her mom and dad for longer than I ever had anyone."

Regina twists her tongue inside her mouth but just nods and swallows. It doesn't escape Emma, the sacrifice Regina is making in not commenting on Emma's mother or Emma's grandfather.

"So, I don't know." Emma scrubs a hand across her face. "So I came down here, because crazily enough I think you're the only one around who can understand."

Emma looks like she might just scamper away, and Regina could not bear that right now, which might be why her voice sounds a little desperate when she speaks. "What can I do for you, Emma?"

Emma blinks over at her suddenly, as if the light has just changed. "Are you fucking with me right now?"

Regina furrows her brows. "No," she says so honestly, without even a hint of her old darkness, except her voice still sounds normal and she still looks like the Regina Emma knows.

"It's just different, this human side of you."

"Thank you," Regina comments dryly.

The boat begins to rock as it crests some bigger waves. Their shoulders knock, Emma teeters, and it's the way Regina reaches out to help steady her that makes Emma take a deep breath and dive in.

She doesn't even mean to though, not really, not all at once. It's just that once she lets go, there are tears in her eyes again almost immediately.  


"What if we can't find our son?"

Regina is already touching Emma and Emma has accidentally made herself pliable, yielding, and so it's not much for Regina to just slide her hands along Emma's back and arm, to lie her palms flat and gentle against her. It's not much for Emma to accept them, both of them, and to tip her tired head onto Regina's nearest shoulder.

Regina doesn't reply, doesn't do anything at all except be warmer and more alive, more receptive and giving, than Emma ever imagined she could be. 

Maybe, Emma realizes, this is why she has sought Regina out. Because the woman doesn't subscribe to good will always conquer evil, she doesn't subscribe to I will always find you and everything will always be okay. Emma and Regina understand one another and maybe that's why they could never meet before without prickling. They have both known the utter, utter blackness of the world and they have twisted unbearably beneath it until finally, finally, they started to fight back with teeth. And they haven't stopped since.

Regina will sit beside Emma and withhold the world's annoying, insincere platitudes. She understands. She will be truthful but not unkind. Not anymore. Not since Henry.  


Emma realizes this at the same time she realizes that yes, she really _has_ been seeking Regina out, and Regina has been seeking Emma out, and it is proof they live in a fucked up world that Emma doesn't even care how goddamn _incorrect_ that seems. Because Regina is Henry's mother above and beyond everything else. Regina is exactly who Emma thought she was and not at all who she thought she was.

"You're the savior, Emma. It's what you do. You find. You save." 

The irony of Regina sitting here reminding Emma about her destiny makes Regina's lips curl back slightly, a temperamental snake in a thinly woven basket. But she bites it all back because maybe Emma has saved her a little bit, too. Emma gave her Henry. Regina hates this fact more than she hates a lot of things, and she hates so very many things.

But when Emma tilts her head just so, and Regina can feel warm breath against her neck, she can't even recall a single thing in this world or any other that she hates enough to untangle her fingers from Emma's hair.

"I don't feel very savior-y right now," Emma murmurs. It is something Emma would say to Mary Margaret but instead she is saying it to _Regina_. The way Regina has begun to stroke her hair is something Mary Margaret would do, too, but it feels so different. It makes Emma feel so different. 

Emma is falling apart again and she finds that the pieces she lets fall in Regina's hands are not the same pieces in her own hands or in her mother's or father's.  


"I know," is all that Regina tells Emma, not long after. Emma thinks maybe those two words are all she has ever needed to hear.

 

 

 

"So fix it!" Emma is screaming at Gold, her eyes snapping back and forth between the useless magic globe and Henry's useless magic grandfather. "Fucking fix it, Gold! What good are you, what good is _any_ of this--because I swear to god--"

But Emma storms away before she can make any promises.

Gold is left staring at Regina, and Regina spares him a glance only because of their solidarity in being simultaneously so powerful and so utterly ineffectual. She moves to follow Emma.

Snow moves at the same time. They lock eyes and hesitate, and it is the most awkward thing the rest of them -- Hook up by the bow and Charming behind Snow and even Gold who shakes his head darkly -- have seen in a long time.

It would almost be comical except Snow looks pained and Regina looks equal parts submissive and ferocious and...hell, Hook laughs right out loud anyway. 

Snow looks away from Regina first and Regina doesn't spare a word or a glance for any of them before continuing off in Emma's direction, some silent battle won between them.

"Ouch," Hook observes. 

Charming rubs Snow's back and only barely manages not to shoot the pirate in the face.

 

 

 

When Regina finds her, it is down below deck in that tiny spot of bunks Regina has claimed. It only cements that Regina was right in being the one to go after Emma. Emma is obviously waiting for her (and this is still so, so strange to the both of them...but there it is).

Emma is pacing the small space like a caged animal, throwing back her hair, the boat teeter totters, creaks, and the effect is that all this tension could burst forth at any moment.

"We told him he wouldn't be alone, Regina," Emma doesn't stop pacing and the boat doesn't stop creaking and rocking. "And now he is, somewhere out there in goddamn Neverland, and who even _knows_ what they're doing to him or _why_! If Gold can't make that thing work I am gonna find another way."

Regina watches patiently only because she knows exactly how Emma feels. "I know," she says again. "I know."

Finally Emma stops, and looks at Regina. She deflates, shoulders slumped. They look at each other and Emma's eyes are so desperate and Regina's are so sad and in this moment, they know that they are both well and truly Henry's mothers. 

"Gold is trying. I know that's hard to believe, but for some reason he _is_ trying." Regina sighs darkly. "Neverland is not a place people like us can just cross into without help."

"People like what? Magic people?"

"Adults," Regina says. And then softer, "parents."

Emma sinks beside Regina on the bunk. "Fuck."

Regina lets a long breath out through her nose and nods.

"Isn't there anything else? Can't we just like, secure the border crossing or something?"

Regina smiles and it looks absolutely nothing like anything Emma has ever seen. It is arresting. It looks like Regina is almost _fond_ of her, despite their multiple layers of impossible situations. Despite the months of clashing on every existential level. Emma loses her words which is just as well, because Regina is talking again.

"No, _Sheriff Swan_ , it doesn't work like that. We have to either have more magic to break through, which is not really an option, or we wait for a weakness to present itself. I know it's awful. I know it is less than ideal."

"But it's all we've got. Yeah, I get it." Emma bends forward, elbows on her knees.

"It's insufferable," Regina says quietly. And then, "We can just sit here for awhile, if you'd like. We can just...miss him together."

And so they do.

 

 

 

Leave it to Mary Margaret to make sure that _doing the laundry_ is thing that actually happens on this rescue mission turned extended stay in fairytale purgatory.

Her mom is folding her dad’s overshirt, stiff from the salt water and pine tar soap that she’s been using to clean all their single sets of clothes with, with the added bonus of making them all feel like they’re on the homestead but without the luxury of firm, dry land. There’s an old chest of elaborate linens that Hook says he “acquired” from Antillia that they sort of rock-paper-scissors over ever since Mary Margaret took it upon herself to pursue this cleanliness-is-next-to-godliness project, presumably just for something to _do_.

Emma is biting her thumbnail and bouncing her foot incessantly and staring hard at a single floorboard. Mary Margaret endures nigh on twenty five minutes of this before pushing the makeshift laundry basket away and fixing her daughter with a stare that, by the looks of Emma’s shrinking shoulders, appears very motherly indeed.

“Sorry,” Emma says quickly.

"Is there something on your mind, Emma?"

"You mean besides the fact that my son is alone somewhere in Neverland and we are stuck on this stupid ship until further notice which, by the way, is not _nearly_ as cool as the Jolly Roger in Pirates of the Carribean?" 

As if they weren't all _acutely_ aware of the situation.

Mary Margaret blinks. Emma sighs. 

"Yes," her mother responds. "Besides that."

Emma bounces her foot some more. It's really no use, trying to evade her mother's knowing stare. "Yeah okay," Emma relents. "This might be a weird time to ask, but if you insist." 

Mary Margaret furrows her brows, and Emma steels herself a little bit. 

"Remember that night at the hospital when Greg first crashed into Storybrooke and David said that thing about Daniel? Regina's fiancé?" The words sound strange in Emma's mouth, half-metallic, like they don't belong there.

"Yes," her mother says slowly.

Emma looks away. Scratches at the side of her boot. "I just wanted to know more about that," she mumbles.

"About Daniel?"

Emma nods imperceptibly. "And Regina."

There is a fairly long silence.

"I guess that's where our story began," Mary Margaret admits. She sounds a little wistful and a lot regretful. There is nothing in the world she will not tell Emma. Her honesty is one of the only things of value that she can still give to her grown daughter. 

So she tells Emma about Daniel, about Cora, about Leopold, about _Regina_ , the best way she can. She takes care to note the way her perspective has changed, the way time has made revelatory the things that were only tiny details barely noticed by a child back then. She tells Emma what she can, about how Regina was a woman full of love and full of hope until she was not. About how loss and grief and regret and anger and desperation can bind two people together in inexplicable, indescribable ways.

Emma listens. Her eyebrows knit. She worries at her necklaces.

"The Evil Queen, her story isn't in Henry's book," she tells Mary Margaret after her mother has stitched together what she could of the past and of the present, and they both find that the quilt it makes is far from satisfactory. Emma cannot forget the sadness and the love she felt as they destroyed that trigger; they have followed her in every moment since, something deep inside of her begging her try to (finally) understand. "Why is that?"

Mary Margaret looks at Emma for a long time, like she knows something else that Emma does not. Finally, with some strange sense of resigned loss that Emma doesn't really have context for, her mother says, "Sweetheart, I think maybe _Regina_ is the one you should be asking that question to."

 

 

 

Regina is out gazing at the star-studded black blue again when a familiar, lazy drawl sounds just above and behind her right shoulder. 

"Brooding _again_ , Miss Mills? You really must find a new hobby."

Regina rolls her eyes. "I was considering trying my hand at crafting oily, half-baked innuendos, but then I remembered that you already have that covered. One lothario per ship is quite enough."

Hook jumps easily from the quarterdeck, lands beside her with a thud and a creak of leather. "You've obviously not spent much time on a pirate ship, milady."  


Regina sighs the deep sigh of the long-suffering. "What do you want, Hook?"

She peers over at him under the starlight, catching just the last vestiges of that jackal grin. Hook shrugs, throwing a casual arm up into the the spindly shrouds. "You looked lonely," he says simply.

It's not that Regina has _lost_ her fight, it is just that she is so bone-tired of fighting. This escapade is the last in a long line of events that have sapped at the reserve of her old self. Hook looks to be in the same position. So instead of hurling another snide remark, Regina swallows against the way her throat is constricting, and nods. Instead of joking or deflecting, Hook remains silent.

They are both so tired of what they've allowed themselves to become.

"Did your mother ever pester you about proverbs, _carpe diem_ , and all that?"

The tension breaks a little, and Regina laughs in a way that sounds like a sob, but it is still decidedly a laugh. "Yes," she says. "'Strike while the iron is hot?'"

"Oh, good! So it wasn't just me. There was another one, what was it..."

"'Better to be feared than loved?'" Regina ventures.

Hook snaps, nods. "Yes, that was one of them. Smart woman, your mother."

Regina gives a sigh. She cocks her head, watches the blue black undulate vastly. "Indeed."

There is a pause, and then Hook shifts, another slow creak of well-worn leather. "I know you had a complicated relationship with Cora," he says. "I know you are probably still trying to get your wits about you, trying to figure out how you feel about everything that's happened. I mean," he laughs, big and bright and genuine, "here we are, sailing around Neverland with the Charmings and Rumplestiltskin -- the objects of our tired vengeance, respectively -- and yet..."

Hook drops his chin onto his fist as if deep in thought. He is making a bit of a show, and Regina eyes him curiously. "What are you getting at, Casanova?" Her voice still comes off queenly enough, she decides.

Hook smiles. "I am saying our worlds are a grand and fickle place, Your Majesty. Maybe we just...start again? I know you're worried about Henry. Perhaps we should accept comfort and support where we can." He glances to Regina, and then back out at the water. "Maybe it's all right to keep our enemies _closer_ , this time 'round."  


Regina has spent decades cultivating the perfect, blank face. "What on earth do you mean?"

Hook just tilts his head at her knowingly, dark eyebrows raising above dark-lined eyes. "I play with her, but it's just for a laugh. I'm a _pirate_. She doesn't need games. She needs something real. Like you do. Like your son does." He thinks about Bae and about Milah, about what he wouldn't do for a second chance. 

Regina feels her face grow hot. She decides not to play dumb, because neither of them will buy it. It is possible that she is having a hard time reconciling this advice with the man giving it, but there is no mistaking the way her heart starts to hope. She rolls her eyes again though, to regain some composure. "My mother was right," she huffs finally, "in what she always told me about you."

"Handsome?" he asks, turning toward her. "Dashing? Cunning? Unimaginable stamina?"

"Pretty to look at, but lacking in couth or substance," Regina challenges with a narrowed brow. "Like a parrot."

Hook grins widely again, but then his face settles into something sparkling and serious. Their demons are so similar, Regina thinks, despite herself.

Regina wants to believe that beneath it all, _this_ man, the man she is seeing in this moment, is the one her mother befriended for so many long, long years. She thinks of Snow and of Emma and Henry and she wants to believe that they can really see her, too.

"Take one last bit of advice from your mother. _Carpe_ the bloody _diem_ , Regina," Hook says. "While you still can."

Regina mutters something about him being incorrigible under her breath, but when she smiles, she makes sure the pirate can see it.

 

 

 

The scuffle of boots gives her away. Emma pokes her head beneath the hatch. 

"Hi," Regina says, putting aside a tiny, careworn book. 

Emma steps down carefully, closes the hatch. "I brought, uh...well, it's definitely a drink of some kind," Emma tells her, glancing at the dusty bottle in her hand. "Hook gave it to me. I'm assuming it contains something fermented."

"How courteous of him."

"Right? That's what I said. But I mean, let's wait until we try it to give him any kudos."

Regina smiles. Emma is still getting used to the way it looks so genuine.

"What are you reading?" Emma asks, stuffing her free hand into her pocket because for some reason she's too nervous to sit down yet.

Regina's fingers slide against the book's spine. "Arabian Nights. Also on loan from the ship's captain."

"He's being unnaturally hospitable," Emma observes.

"I think like he said, he just needed to be reminded that he could be." Regina's eyes don't waver a bit, and Emma shifts, side to side.

She decides this might be a good time to crack open that bottle.

 

 

 

"I wanted to ask you something."

They are each two shots down. The bottle turned out to contain some really strong bumbo, spiced to high heaven, and not all that bad for having been stashed in the hull for like two decades.

Regina watches Emma fidget with her empty glass. 

"I heard you had a fiancé once named Daniel."

It is not what Regina was expecting to hear. She didn't _know_ what she was expecting to hear, but it was not that. Something green and sweet-smelling overwhelms her senses for the length of one heartbeat; it turns black and bitter on the next. She closes her eyes and tries to remember how she doesn't need to snap in half. She doesn't need to be angry anymore.

"He worked in our stables. We were engaged for all of five minutes before my mother killed him in front of me," Regina manages. "Not exactly a lengthy engagement.”

The horror on Emma’s face is not as pronounced as it had been the first time, when her mother told her, but hearing it from Regina weighs so much heavier.  


It is still satisfying to Regina, how Emma's face twists. In a perverse sort of way.

Regina sips the bumbo, letting the silence ride this out. Something so very deep inside of her, something that has barely moved since she set foot on this boat, cannot help but want Emma to feel uncomfortable. Regina has been so terribly sad, so unimaginably alone, for such a long time. All she has ever wanted was for someone to climb down that sadness and sit with her a while.

Emma has had a part in Regina's story since before she was born, and she has barely known it until now.

"But you...loved him?" Emma asks, still averting her eyes, when the silence becomes too much.

When Regina responds, it is in a raw voice that Emma feels she has no business hearing. "With all my heart," she says. "I've never stopped."

Emma frowns. This conversation is already too much. She keeps talking. "David said that he came back, that you--that you had to..."

"Kill him? Again?" Regina sucks in some air, tilts her head, and the force of her gaze almost makes Emma flinch. "Yes." Regina keeps her voice conversational, as if daring Emma to come any closer. "He was dangerous. He...was not himself. Whale..." She unsticks her throat. "Anyway. Henry was there."

So often in the past Regina's words have sounded scripted and insincere, but right now, they just sound hollow. Emma has tried to not think of Neal but she thinks of him now, briefly, how she's lost him twice, too, and how it feels like...well, like a goddamn _fairytale_ compared to what Regina is telling her.

Emma wants to ask something else, but it’s more sensitive. It is frighteningly personal, potentially destructive. She asks anyway because she’s just thrown back another mouthful from the bottle and the sickly burn gives her courage. She just needs to _understand_ , for herself and for her parents and for _Henry_. For Regina. If they find a way out of this, they are going to have to figure out what it means to be a family. 

Emma just needs to understand. “You married my mom’s father, but you didn’t want to, did you?”

Even though Regina hates this moment fiercely, she cannot bring herself hate Emma for it. “What do you think,” she whispers.

Emma blinks. “I don’t know," she whispers back, so softly. "That’s why I’m asking." Not asking before this moment, Emma thinks, may have just been her biggest oversight of all.

“Leopold loved his kingdom and his daughter. That love did not extend to me. I just wanted a life that was _mine_.”

“What happened?”

Regina wishes she could stop talking, but the words just come and come and come. If Emma is going to begin to hate her again, Regina wants it to be without the veil. “There was not a single way in which he did not ignore me or resent me for not being Snow's mother," Regina tells Emma. "I tried, but I had so little left in me. I was a doll of a wife and a doll of a mother for more than a decade and it killed me far more slowly than the merciful, quick death that I gave to him."

Emma isn’t sure what to say. She feels stunned. She grasps at something, anything honest, to keep Regina talking. To keep herself understanding. “You weren’t....you couldn’t have been much older than she was." The truth and the horror and the _absurdity_ , it is so much to try to accept. "This was...your _life_. Your _future_.”

Regina's mouth curves into a pained smile that Emma can't keep looking at, so she turns her face away. “You're beginning to understand.”

Emma stares into her empty glass. Her head is swimming. Regina’s hand is resting only a few inches away from her own. She feels angry and uncomfortable and so soul-numbingly _sorry_ and she keeps having this stupid, stupid urge to slide her fingers across Regina's. She wants to tear their lives down and build them back up in a way that won't hurt them anymore. “This was after Daniel?”

“Immediately after," Regina says, as Emma pulls the scattered pieces together. "We were going to run away together, but my mother wanted me to be Queen. That's why she killed him. I tried to run away again so many times before the wedding. My mother was... _persuasive_ in making me stay.” She could show Emma the scars, the visible ones, if she ever intended to show anyone at all. Some of them are from her mother and some of them are from herself and she will never be able to recall, after so many long years, which are which anymore. “She told me that it was because she loved me. Knew what was best for me. She kept me in a cage my whole life. I never wanted to be like her."

Emma had not been there when Cora died. She has only her own mother's words in her head: _there were other paths. She killed my mother, but Cora was a mother too, Emma. I spent my life wanting to keep Regina and Cora together and then I tore them apart and now all four of us have been without our mothers and without our children, don't you see? None of this ever should have happened._

"And now I'm exactly like she was," Regina says. "I blackened myself with magic and hatred. The only difference is I always had my heart, and maybe that means I'm even worse."

"No," Emma says, more suddenly and more loudly than she meant to. She is breathing hard and fast. Regina sounds unrepentant, but Emma knows she has to say something. "I don't believe that. And despite what she did, she _loved you_ because you are her kid, Regina, and we both know that there is nothing we wouldn't do for our children."

Regina looks away. She takes another drink. Even in the dimly-lit space, Emma can see the tears in her eyes. Regina pays no attention to them, as if they are merely incidental.

"And I know you worry that you're like her in the worst ways, that you've been the sort of mother to Henry that she was to you. I know you loved her anyway and you hated all of us because we didn’t believe you, because we refused to see that you were trying, but drowning."

The drink doesn't burn enough. Regina twists her tongue against the taste of it, willing the fire to spread farther. She wishes she didn't long for the things Emma is saying even as she says them. She wishes her mother's last words and last look were things she could just stop caring about, because everything is over, done, and she still doesn't know how to move on (this has been her problem all along).

"And I won't be able to do anything except apologize the best I can for that but...you aren't _her_ , Regina, you're..." And Emma just wrings her hands, her eyes growing desperate. She wishes she could show Regina that look on Henry's face, those times she was _his mother_ , those times she was _Regina_. To remind her about what she has now, what she has worked for. Emma finds that in this moment she barely cares about the curse or about her destiny, about evil queens or about who to blame or why she never had a family, why she was always, always alone.

(Regina was alone, too.)

Everything is so much more complicated than anything should ever be and Emma wants to run away and she wants to stay and more than anything, she just wants a chance to finally start over.

Regina feels like her lungs are collapsing, like her mind is caving in on her. "Emma," she whispers. "You have no _idea_ who I am."

The tone should be enough to set a blush to Emma's cheeks. It doesn't. It makes Emma stare harder. Emma keeps staring, and Regina raises her head to meet Emma's light eyes, stares back, and neither of them are backing down. 

"Except yeah, still I think that I do," Emma breathes. "There was just so much of you I didn't understand."

Regina's eyes slip lower, land on Emma's mouth. For decades now, Regina has taken from others what she doesn't have and cannot survive without. It has become about what will keep her alive, keep her _feeling_ , because despite everything, there is something inside of her that refuses to die. 

She is so _tired_ of _trying_ and she misses her son so badly. She is ashamed and defiant of this whole conversation and she wishes, for just a moment, that she had enough strength to call up a bit of her old darkness to hide behind. Because that, at least, would be familiar. In the silence between them, Regina remembers Hook's advice and her mother's last words and she isn't sure what any of it is supposed to actually mean, anymore.

Regina is certain that all the breath and all the reason have gone from her body, and so she lurches forward as the boat rocks beneath them, and pulls Emma's mouth to her own.

Their lips barely touch and Regina melts. She twists her hand into Emma's shirt, presses in, just above her heart. There is something Regina wants there, something she needs so desperately, and finally, maybe, things are starting to fill with oxygen, to turn right side up--

But Emma pushes her away.

It happens like an involuntary reflex, the way the rejection makes Regina's other hand snake immediately around Emma's throat and begin to squeeze. 

She catches herself in time, before Emma can react. That bottle between them clatters away half empty and Regina is disappearing through the hatch before it even stops rolling across the floor. Emma will have tiny red crescents denting the column of her throat from Regina's nails, but nothing more (it will feel like enough of a reminder, some sort of metaphor she cannot decipher).

The hatch rattles as it slams and Emma is left with a deep ringing in her ears. All she can think about is that taste of apples in her mouth, the hollow way her chest aches. All she can think about is how it wasn't supposed to _happen_ like this, whatever is between her and her son’s mother. Then again, she thinks bitterly, absolutely nothing in their lives have ever happened they way they had hoped or intended.

 

 

 

Thankfully for all souls on board, Regina runs into no one as she paces and paces the deck. The air feels colder now than it has since they got here. Regina knows, in the same way she knows about the magic in her veins, that they are further away from finding Henry tonight than they were this morning. She knows, in the same way she knows about that magic, that the further away Emma and Regina get from one another, the farther away their son will get from both of them. Somehow, someway, this is true, and it is like vexing over a mathematical equation in which half the numbers are missing. 

It has something to do with Neverland and nothing at all to do with Neverland and Regina cannot stop feeling Emma's lips, cannot stop her newly liable heart from racing, aching, longing.

Hours pass, and she paces.

 

 

 

Emma doesn't leave the hull bunk. She considers it, and then decides that Regina has to sleep sometime, so she waits. 

And then she reconsiders.

Emma considers and reconsiders bolting until she realizes that she will not be able to rest tonight, she will not be able to _breathe_ tonight, until she gets the chance to talk to Regina again. She wonders, as she lights the oil lamp and settles in to wait (because she knows better than to go searching in this particular situation), if this is just the last in a series of long, scary, and difficult decisions that have enabled her to grow roots.

She remembers, months ago, how Regina had accused her of having none. She scowls because Regina had been fucking _awful_ , but it had been true.  


It isn't true anymore.

Emma toys with her necklaces as she waits. She has memorized the indentations of the tiny swan, can feel where her thumb has run the metal smooth over the years. There has rarely been a day where she's taken it off, ever since Neal gave it to her. Emma still doesn’t know what to think about how her entire life, the one meaningful relationship she ever had, had always been beyond her control. Everyone had called it destiny, but it feels more like thievery. She had been born in the Enchanted Forest into a preexisting fate (like Regina), batted off into a non-magical world only to grow up hard, untrusting, before Henry pulled her right back in. And she was supposed to be happy about it, the way everyone told her she was the only hope to saving this screwed up world that she cared so little about? Because she has _been there_ now, and she cannot admit it to her mother or to her father, but she doesn't think she ever wants to go back. She might have not been alone there, but she also might have been some simpering princess, maybe married off as a teenager to someone older than her father, like Regina was. Emma loves her parents and they’d have tried their best, but every world has its inherent injustices, and none moreso than the fucking Enchanted Forest.

Emma yanks at the necklace. It comes apart, the thin gold chain sliding from her neck, draping across her hand. It swings like a pendulum and Emma watches it glitter in the lamplight. 

Maybe she can come to terms with Neal being taken away again. Maybe they were never really meant to be in each other's lives long enough to be honest with one another. Probably Neal was just another pawn that she was foolish enough to think she could keep (like Daniel). 

But _Henry_. Losing her son again is not an option. She knows now that she will pick Henry first time and time again, and so will Regina, _every time_ , and that has to mean something.

Emma's parents are really good at finding one another. Apparently, it is what her family does best. Henry found her, and so she will find Henry. She will find Henry and she will find Regina, too, somewhere underneath all this hurt, and then--

And then they'll see what can be done about starting over. Because Emma broke Regina’s curse and Regina broke Emma’s family and this is a circle that must be near its end, or near its beginning, because there is nothing to _do_ now but start over.

It is perfect timing, how Emma's heart glows and beats strong with resolution just as the roof hatch opens.

She's off her feet in an instant, holding a hand up to stop Regina before she leaves again or before she says anything at all. "Wait, no stop." 

Regina peers down at her, fingers curling against the leather strap of the hatch opening. Her eyes are dark, darker even than before, but she makes no movement one way or the other, so Emma takes a deep breath. She gathers up all the impossible fathoms and the decades between them, and pushes them aside.

“I think I just wasn’t ready yet,” Emma says. “I think I wasn’t ready to understand all of this. To understand you. But I wanted to and I needed to, so I just...” Emma drops her hands uselessly. “Please just come back down here?”

So Regina does. When she steps off that last ladder rung, Emma comes up beside her. Regina is a fire that has burnt itself out and she has to choose between defiance and conservation in this moment, so she accepts the hand that curls around her forearm.

“I’m sorry,” Regina whispers. She doesn’t dare try to touch Emma again, but her eyes flicker across the marks at her throat, watching Emma swallow.

“We can talk about that,” Emma says, making a valiant effort to keep her voice steady. “I want to talk about that. But first there’s just--there’s one more thing I need to say, okay? Just don’t--don’t talk. Let me try to get this out.”

It is Regina’s turn to swallow. She nods. Emma's hand falls away.

There is something inside of Emma bubbling up and bubbling up, spilling over the edges of her. It has been spilling over the edges of her for months, maybe for her whole miserable life, and it’s the last fucking piece of twisted metal that she is going to throw onto this colossal, existential trainwreck, but she is going to do it. So that she can breathe. So that they can start again.

“You _took away the life I could have had_ ,” she tells Regina. Regina marvels, reluctantly, at how Emma’s voice has strengthened in just these last moments. How her bright eyes flash with courage and with something stronger that Regina can’t even place. Regina is envious, astonished, at how Emma Swan seems to have an abundance of all the things she herself so severely lacks. 

“You ruined my family and you ruined families you didn’t even know,” Emma says. “You tried to kill my parents. You cursed away the free will from a land that had so little of it in the first place. You made our son feel like he was crazy at one of the most formative times in his childhood. You made _me_ feel crazy. Everything you did these last few months in Storybrooke, god, Regina, I can’t even...” Emma’s eyes fill up with desperation and she doesn’t even need to mention any of it, Graham or Kathryn or the way Regina used and manipulated everyone including her own son, any of it. 

Regina turns her face away. 

“I don’t even _know_ all of the things you did when you were Queen because I just...I only know Regina. And I know that’s complicated, to say the least, especially when you started _trying_.” Emma takes another deep breath, and fueled by something deep inside her bones, something that clings to her blood like a legacy, she presses on. “But you know what? All these months that I hated who you were and the choices you were making, there were still so many mornings where I’d have coffee at Mary Margaret’s table, I’d sit there and I’d drink my damn coffee and I’d think--I’d think about how even after _everything_ you put _everyone_ through, even though I still don’t know how to even _begin_ to forgive you for that, I’d sit at that table and I’d still hope that wherever you were, you were feeling love. That you hadn’t given up. Because Henry believed in you. Because you are a human being and you were hurt beyond what you thought was reparable, and if you don’t deserve a break from that, Regina, then I don’t even know where that leaves the rest of us.”

Regina stares at Emma, at the woman, the _child_ , that was always destined to undo the curse that should have brought her something close to happiness. She’d killed her father, the thing she loved most, to cast that curse. She’d given her whole soul to her hatred and to her hopelessness and her father had been right, her only friend had been right, _Mary Margaret_ had been right: the farther she went and the more she took, the emptier she became.

And how infuriating it should have been to realize in this moment that Snow White had in fact, from the very beginning, done both: taken everything away from Regina _and_ given her everything she could ever want or need.

Regina stares at Emma. Emma, because _Henry_.

Before, Regina would have let loose her venom because of her inability to cope with realization. Now, she just sits in silence. She lets Emma’s words _mean_ something, because yes, the scope of the devastation she has caused is something she is at last beginning to comprehend. 

Because yes, her hurt had always been so much more than she could ever hold.

“I didn’t understand,” Emma whispers. She thinks about all the places they connect that she just didn’t want to see before. She thinks about that young woman who saved her mother's life, how she would give so much to be able to meet her, to thank her.

“Neither did I,” Regina admits, and the words seem simultaneously hopelessly inadequate and far too immense to be coming from her throat. It is a wonder she doesn’t choke on them completely.

When she looks at Emma again, suddenly it isn't just Henry that Regina sees. It is Emma's mother, for once. It is _Snow White_. It is everything she destroyed and how it can never be all the way fixed and Regina tries, at least, to consider this all again in the silence before she speaks. It will be difficult for her to ever understand how sometimes, the ends do not justify the means. She has regrets, but they are buried so very far below her surface.

She still thinks that she is sorry.

“Emma,” Regina says, quietly. “What is it that you want the very most? If you could have anything in the world, with certainty?”

Emma wants to be able to say that what she desires most is everything that Regina took, to go back and change everything, but it just isn't true. She can't help it: truthfully, Emma's mind slips to the way Henry’s eyes light up when he runs to hug Regina, how Regina’s eyes snap shut and the smile just melts across her lips like she’s been given another chance all over again every time his tiny arms encircle her. Her mind slips to Henry in the morning, in Mary Margaret's apartment in Storybrooke, sleepy eyes and fire-bright hair and _hey mom, what’s for breakfast?_

They can be better, can be stronger, together. Didn’t they _just_ prove that they can fix everyone and everything if only they stop dwelling and move forward?  


Would it really be so impossible to just _start again_?

“I want to know it’s not too late for any of us,” Emma says. “I want to know that soon this fucking eternal night will end and dawn will come and we’ll be able to rescue our son and take him home. I want to know that this is for keeps. This... _family_.”

“ _Family_ ,” Regina repeats.

Their gazes lock, and it isn’t really a revelation, this moment between them. It is too soft, too calm for that. It’s more like seeds falling into a line of damp earth, a key clicking finally into place.

Regina smiles that new smile again, and Emma's heart cannot stand it: she closes the space between them to kiss it.

When she eases away, she says, "I was scared. When you did that before. There's something...I can feel something, when you get close. It scares me so I pushed it away."  


Regina just nods, eyes closed. She keeps a palm to Emma's cheek just to hold steady. "Yes," she breathes. "That's the magic, dear."

Emma's brow furrows. "Magic," she repeats faintly, thinking about the mines again. It is endlessly uncomfortable to Emma, knowing that she has magic inside of her without her permission. Like it is some sort of viral invasion or an unwanted inherited title.

Regina opens her eyes, gives a slow nod. "I told you before, Emma. Your magic is unique. You can feel mine, too, can't you?"

But it isn't really a question, because Regina knows the answer. Emma meets Regina's eyes in confirmation anyway.

"No wonder you were scared," Regina mutters.

Emma almost wants to hate that hand on her cheek, how it tucks itself more tightly against her skin when Emma doesn't brush it away. Regina almost hates herself for doing it.  


But here they are, and still, meeting no resistance, Regina slides her hands back into the mess of Emma’s hair. Emma doesn’t know what will happen if she touches Regina again and _means_ it, so she stays safe, turning only to rest her temple against the inside of Regina’s wrist. She lets out long, shaky breaths, one after another after another, and Regina remains still, trying to pretend it all doesn’t leave her dizzy, too.

They stay like this long into the unending night.

 

 

\----


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "And Emma," Regina says quietly, listening to Emma's breath even out once again, "none of us are alone anymore."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaahahahahahahah it's been six months since I updated, CLEARLY I'M GOOD AT THIS.
> 
> sorry guys. I love you all, thank you for the continued kudos and nudgings. sincerely hope you enjoy this last half.

\---

 

 

_I went to a cobbler to fix a hole in my shoe_

_he took one look at my face and said,_

_"I can fix that hole in you"_

\--jenny lewis

 

 

\---

 

 

“Maybe you should stop brooding,” Gold tells Emma, “and start concentrating.” She can hear his stupid cane thudding every second step, coming up next to her.

“On what?” she asks, petulantly. She has been throwing pebbles and splinters of wood and whatever else she can find on the dirty deck floor out into the rolling waves.

“On understanding your _magic_ ,” Gold says, like it is that obvious. His eyes sparkle and she suddenly realizes that she doesn’t think she’s ever seen the man blink. “It may very well turn out to be the key to this entire endeavour.”

Fucking _magic_ , Emma thinks, but she doesn’t want to appear rattled. So she responds, in her best no-bullshit voice, “Fine. So tell me how. Like you did before, with the protection spell.”

Gold surveys her calmly for a few moments, and Emma surveys him back, and then: “No, I don't think so. It needs to be Regina this time.”

Emma squints. “Why?”

“Trust me, Miss Swan. That’s the way it has to be.”

Emma flings her last pebble out into the dark water, frustrated. “Why the hell haven’t you mentioned this before? We’ve been looking for a break ever since we got here. We’ve had cabin fever for weeks. Henry needed us like, yesterday.”

When she glances back to him though, she notices how truly tired he looks, and she deflates a little bit. There is grey flecked stubble all over his chin and cheeks and matching grey rings under his eyes. Maybe Regina was right, maybe he is trying.  


That voice hasn’t gotten any less suspicious, however.

“The way in which we proceed is dependent on many variables,” Gold says, characteristically vague. “These variables change hour by hour, day by day. I didn’t mention it until now because I wasn’t _aware_ of it until now. I thought the globe would find us a way in; I believe I was wrong. _You_ will. Both of you, together.”

Emma squints at him again, trying to activate her superpower. It feels slower, these days. “Okay,” she says at last, because she has little choice but to agree, but to keep on grasping. “Okay, so, what, I just go ask Regina if she’ll be my personal Hogwarts tutor?”

“No, Emma.” Gold says, with a slow smile. “You will _tell_ her."

Emma raises a brow, but says nothing.

 

 

 

They are eating some sort of porridge...thing, messy, half-congealed glops in scrubbed wooden bowls. Regina found some dried dates in that chest from Antillia, and those make their meal slightly more palatable, though not by much. 

"We're in the middle of the ocean in a ship full of magic, you'd think we could rustle up some goddamn sushi or something," Emma complains. There _has_ been some fish in these desolate waters, but all of it too boney, too salty with barely any meat.

Mary Margaret glances across the table at Emma. "Honey," she says gently. "Stop playing with your food."

Emma lets her spoon clatter back into the bowl with a sigh. 

Regina's eyes glance back and forth between them.

David taps his fingers against the table in sporadic half-rhythms (Regina makes him a little nervous). Gold and Hook are elsewhere on the ship, hopefully not murdering one another.

After a few more moments of quiet, Regina clears her throat. "I could try."

All three of them look over. Regina looks only at Emma.

"Sushi," she explains. 

Magic is different in every world, and it has barely crossed Regina's mind to try to use it here for something so mundane, so logical, so innocuous. She has been trying not to use magic for Henry, relapsing, and trying some more. An addict is supposed to quit completely or not at all.

She's been trying to stop. But if she darkened herself with magic, maybe she can un-darken herself with magic, too. Maybe that's how she will finally detangle herself from her mother. 

When Snow and David offer to do the cleaning up, Emma catches Regina's eye and jerks her head up toward deck.

A few minutes later they emerge into fresh (fresher) air, settling in side by side on a roughly hewn ledge at the the back of the quarterdeck. It's not cold enough to need their jackets.

"Um," Emma says suddenly, quirking her head at what should be the horizon. "Does that look lighter to you?"

Regina glances outward. "Look at that," she says. There is something distinctly brighter about the blue black. "Unless the stars themselves are dimming."

"Yeah," Emma says. "Weird. Should we assume any change is good change?"

Regina sighs. "At this point, we can only hope."

They sit in silence for a while longer. The breeze starts up, but it's warm, it ruffles Emma's shirt and it's blowing Regina's hair back when she turns to look at her. "Gold told me I need to learn about my magic," she says. "He said he thinks the globe isn't going to work anymore, because _I_ will lead us to Henry."

Regina blinks in this information, and nods it out. "Alright," she replies, and neither of them need to say _savior_ because they are both thinking it, even if it has become a tired cliche.

"He said something else, too." Emma eases her words out slowly. "Regina, he said that you need to be the one to help me. We need to do it together."

Regina's brows slant, pinch. Her dark eyes skip past Emma, and Emma can tell she is thinking something, hard. "What? What is it?"

Regina swallows. The tension at her forehead releases a little. "I had a feeling it might come to that," she says.

Of course, because Emma is always the last to know. But also, what did that even _mean_? "Because of--of what happened between us back in Storybrooke?"

"You're going to have to be a little more specific, Miss Swan."

Emma raises a tired brow.

"Yes," Regina relents. "Among...other things." Regina's eyes skip to Emma's lips and she remembers all over again how well she knows that mouth, now.

"Christ. I really do feel like the Harry Potter of this story, you get that right? Everyone else knew I was a wizard before I did."

"Amateur magician at best, Emma. You are a reluctant, inexperienced participant."

"Whatever."

And to Emma's surprise, Regina smiles a knowing smile.

"Regina. What's going on? Do you know what Gold knows?"

The hazy, confusing, loathsome thoughts that have plagued Regina since they got here are beginning to take shape, the pieces sliding together, more and more realization making her chest blossom with both relief and anxiety. Mostly it is the relief that wins out, giving way to a tentative validation, permission to acknowledge how correct and true and _helpful_ her feelings for Emma might actually turn out to be, and Emma’s for her. 

(She doesn't need to snap in half anymore. She doesn't need to be angry.)

"I have always known much more than he ever gave me credit for," Regina says, darkly.

 

 

 

The gentle creak of wood back and forth, back and forth is a constant on the ship. The sound is always there in the background of things, like a clock ticking. It is either a steadying comfort or an anxiety-riddled reminder, depending on the atmosphere.

Regina isn't sure what the atmosphere is right now, but she counts the creaks in the silence between her and Gold, counts them and exhales on the odds.

She's seated next to him in Hook's cabin, beside the old oak desk. The three of them are sharing a (surprisingly) neutral silence, Hook slathering oil on a pair of black boots in the corner and Gold scratching down a long piece of parchment with an emerald quill, Regina sitting quietly counting creaks, taking breaths.

"This is where it ends, then?" She murmurs at length, on one of the longer exhales. The quill ceases its scratching and the creaks fade into the background once more. "This is the culmination of thirty years of warfare."

"This is where it _begins_ ," Gold says. She thinks he might have winked at her (the nerve), but it could just be the flickering lamplight. "Glass half full, dearie."

Regina looks at him, bemused and amused and skeptical, as if this were just like old times. Better times, if there ever was such a thing. "When did you get to be so accepting?"

Gold smiles. "Since we set out on this godforsaken adventure,” he says. “You started to understand before I did, Regina, now that's saying something. I've already lost everything, but _you_. You still have everything to gain. There's a certain poetic irony there, don't you think?"

Gold's voice conveys some sort of humbling hint of self-deprecation, and Regina stares at him wide-eyed for a few moments as if he were a complete stranger, because really, when?, but then she just sighs and looks down into her hands. Once upon a time he was her mentor, after all (and after all, she's so tired of having enemies; it takes so much to be hateful, to carry your hardness with you like perpetually-extended claws).

"I feel like I don't know who I am anymore," Regina tells him. 

At this point, Hook looks over silently. His dark eyes and her dark eyes meet and Gold just says, "Perhaps. But that's the cost. You don't ever get to choose the price you pay for magic, or for love. You know that."

Hook speaks up. "Why do you think I could never touch land here? Why we still can't? It makes perfect sense now: you can't take any baggage to Neverland, love, and adults have nothing but. Our merry band’s got enough between us to fill this entire ocean." 

Gold sets the quill down. Regina's eyes fall on the parchment and she reads _Belle_ and _my son_ and _please, please forgive_ before Gold's voice pulls her attention away again. "Henry and Emma need you. You need them. It's as simple as that. That has to be the key."

Regina presses her lips to her knuckles, folds her hand into a fist. "No baggage, huh."

"No baggage," Gold says softly, "and I think we might have a chance." 

It does seem obvious now, the way this was meant to play out. Everyone trapped on this ship together, six adults, six parents with nothing but poison and frustration between them -- and time. So much time.

Gold smiles again, and it looks as genuine as she's ever seen. As genuine as hers feel when she looks at Emma these days. She wonders if he's really given up, given in, if that's why he seems so untethered. She wonders how. She wonders if the freedom is worth all that sacrifice, in the end. They've both been so selfish for so long.

But _all_ their futures depend on this. They all have something to prove to themselves, just being here with one another.

Regina feels as though she has already taken that first big step; feeling love for Emma had not been a conscious choice, but forfeiting her vengeance has to be. She's been on the brink of that for a while now, anyway (they all have).  


Still, she's never known anything else. She is worried that she will stop remembering her mother's voice, Daniel's eyes.

"You see now why it has to be you," Gold tells her. "It's been you since the beginning, dearie: I made it that way.” This was never his plan, but Rumple knows (and against all odds, is learning) about fate and what happens when you try to resist or change it. With Snow and Charming, he orchestrated every bit of the narrative that was within his reach. With Emma and Regina, he knows he would be foolish even to try. He’s learning. “It's always been you and Emma."

"And Henry," Regina reminds him.

Gold nods. "And Henry."

 

 

 

"You know, that first day I met you, I thought to myself, 'I could cross a hundred lands and I'd never again see anything as beautiful as this little girl'." 

Regina stops just before their shoulders touch. 

"You were the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, Snow. Years passed, you grew up, and even after everything else changed, that’s one thing that never did."

Snow rubs the pad of her middle finger against the wedding ring on her opposite hand. She doesn't say anything. There’s a tick just below her right eye; it may be from exhaustion, or from her jaw clenching, Regina can’t tell.

"But then I saw Henry."

Snow remains still, silent.

"And then Emma," Regina adds quietly, nearly reverently. Snow remembers charcoal soft eyes and the way they follow Emma endlessly, and _the Evil Queen, her story isn't in Henry's book_.

Snow turns now, and her eyes meet Regina’s. Those eyes aren't upset, they aren't angry. They are wide and sorry and they look so, so like Emma's. Snow's hair has grown longer in these last weeks, unruly, and Regina has a hard time seeing timid, unconfident Mary Margaret anywhere in the woman beside her now.

"Did you know that I could never truly hate you?" Regina continues, viciously, ironically amused with a bite of self deprecation, because Snow is still looking at her, watching her, and because Emma has awoken something inside of her that cannot be tempered back down. "Not as much as I pretended to. Not as much as I wanted to.” She laughs, and it sounds like a growl. “But it didn’t matter. I wanted you gone so badly. I still loved you, and I _hated_ it, and every time I looked at you all I saw was everything I had lost and everything I had yet to lose."

Snow blinks rapidly, clearing the tears like cobwebs. "I can't imagine that, that you loved me even half as much as I loved you."

Regina swallows, averts her eyes to the deck floor. The dirt and the filth have blended with the planks of old wood, each clinging to the other. "If you ever loved me, you certainly had a funny way of showing it." Everyone who had ever claimed to love Regina had left, or had stayed and used it as an excuse to continue doing wrong by her.

Snow thinks that this is why Regina has a funny way of showing her love, too. "Because you broke my heart, Regina. Over and over again."

"You broke mine _first_ ," Regina whispers sorely, the hiss of a wounded animal.

Snow breathes in. She has had so much time to think: about family, about home, about the past and the future and perspective, time and circumstance and repentance. Would it accomplish anything to enumerate the crimes they had all committed against each other? Had it ever before?

Snow has been selfish. She has been willful in her ignorance, her arrogance, and she has been reactive, dismissive of Regina's pain (of Regina’s _everything_ ), unwilling to understand and acknowledge her part in it. 

(Regina has also been each of these things.)

Snow thinks about Cora, about her father, about her mother, about Daniel, and wonders if, in this moment, she still truly believes that it’s never too late to do the right thing. If, in this moment, she is that able and willing to admit to all her mistakes (and in doing so, would forgive herself, and Regina).

She wonders if Regina would forgive _her_.

"I've always thought that love and hate were very similar, when all is said and done," Snow says now, in Mary Margaret's soft voice. "They both connect people in the same intimate, visceral ways."

Regina considers this. "For a whole life long," she concedes, and everything, absolutely everything, aches. That darkness in Snow's heart is still there, and it binds them now as much as the love or the hate ever had.

Snow glances at Regina. She means for the glance to be brief, but Regina's eyes catch hers and she cannot, cannot, look away.

She wants to say that she's sorry. God, she's so _sorry_. She wants to know that Regina is sorry, too. She wants for Emma and Henry to be safe and to be happy and she doesn't care anymore about who's right or wrong because she doesn’t _know_ who’s right or wrong (maybe, just maybe, she never has).

There are decades of pain between them, some of it new and bleeding and some of it old and scarred, and she just wants to be _done_ , the way Emma wants to be done, the way Regina wants but doesn't know _how_ to be done.

“I never gave up on you, you know." Snow tells Regina, instead of _I gave you so many chances_. She doesn’t blink, she doesn’t breathe. “So many of my actions I would go back and change, but never that hope. I never, never gave up on you.”

Regina gives a bark of a laugh. A bit of starlight catches a tear in the corner of her eye, lights it like a diamond. Her mind doesn’t remember anything but desperate loathing towards Snow White, but her body remembers the softer things that her mind has forgotten. She reaches, on instinct, muscle memory, for Snow’s cheek, reaches and curves her fingers beneath Snow’s chin. Snow tilts that chin up, because she too remembers the softer things. She doesn't know if Regina finally ( _finally_ ) means to put an end to her this way, or if this is Regina grasping at straws again, or if maybe this touch is simple, and means exactly how it feels--

It happens so quickly, so completely, the way Regina is suddenly crumbling, caving, tearing herself into pieces. She shakes, sobs like the first swift crack of thunder, and Snow catches Regina's wrist before it can fall away, wraps her hand around it gingerly. 

There is truth no matter where Regina turns now, it is all around her and inside of her and so much of it is ugly, so much of it is difficult, so much of it is like wandering lost on a path, or worse, finding it once again.

Regina's eyes are so heavy with emotion, her body is so small and it is bending under the weight of their whole lives and Snow still can't look away. They are back on the forest path on that moonlit night, they are sharing secrets that could mean the difference between repeating the past or changing the future, and barely thinking, Snow uses her free hand to pull Regina closer still.

Regina sobs, and shakes, and she bares her teeth because she is angry, tired, scared, on _fire_ \--

"I'm in love with your daughter," she gasps, snapping her eyes shut against the way the world clatters away, and the way it rushes slowly, suffocatingly back in. (Everything that broke her is because of love and magic and she doesn't know how to believe that they can fix everything. But Snow does -- she knows how they can heal, weave hope from thin air, and Regina hates, loathes, that all she wants is to ask her _how?_ because last time they were here, she _knew_. She _explained_ it, watched recognition dawn on Snow’s small face, felt her own whole heart burst with _possibility_...

They had both been so young.)

Snow's thumbs had been tracing soothing circles against Regina's hands, but they still, now. 

The horizon flickers although neither woman sees it, and it is long, long moments later that Snow finally tries to speak.

Her vocal chords suddenly seem too tight.

"You're--you're in love with _Emma_?" Snow repeats, a gentle whisper, and she just sounds...awed. She _is_ awed. She blinks, freezes, and everything she is made of and everything she knows floats away from her because those dark eyes are so heavy, and she knows that Regina is not lying. 

Snow's heart cracks. She wants to fall to pieces, but more than that she wants to weep, she wants to take Regina into her arms and sink to the dirty floor and weep and weep because there is so much symmetry in the world, and all at once, Snow cannot fathom anything more appropriate than this moment between them.

Looking at Regina now, Snow knows that this has to be all right: something has been taken away from her all over again, and something far too big to hold, to fight against, has taken its place. She thinks about the way Emma lets Regina linger beside her, the way there is something between them she helped to forge but cannot touch (and still, there is nothing in the world she will not do, will not give up or away, for her grown daughter).

Maybe everything that happened, happened for this.

When she unsticks her throat at last, Snow swallows, and blinks away the cobwebs once more.

"A woman I deeply admired once told me that true love is the most powerful magic of all,” she says to Regina.

Regina means to shove Snow White away, really she does, but somehow...somehow she just clutches the woman closer.

"We're going to need all the magic we can get to find your son, don't you think?"

It sounds sort of like a promise, a sacrifice, a hard won truce, and it is steadier than she could have even hoped for. As Regina stares beyond Snow's shoulder beneath wet black eyelashes, this feeling between them starts to swell. The weight, all that _weight_ that settled between them that night at the stables (and in every moment since) starts to shift around every bit of this slowly seeping surrender. Snow takes in another breath, lungs expanding like a brand new star, and she blows it out, blows away all the worry and all the fear and all the _guilt_ \-- for good, she sincerely hopes.

Snow curls her fingers in against Regina's spine, and Regina presses a hand to Snow's dark hair, and she knows that she will never, ever stop being grateful for all these second chances.

 

 

 

Emma has begun to equate the creak of the roof hatch with Regina's arrival, and it doesn't matter that she's still dreaming, still half asleep -- her heart starts to beat faster and she mumbles incoherencies out into the salty dark air.

Footsteps, and fingers through her hair.

"Shhh," Regina murmurs, close. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"Regina," Emma mumbles, "I dreamt about Henry."

Regina watches Emma bury her face into the tattered pillow. 

"He was out in the middle of this island, and I was paddling toward him, but I couldn't get there -- I wasn't strong enough, I was so alone, and he was crying like something was coming for him, and I _couldn't_ \--I couldn't _get_ to him--"

Emma is crying too, and Regina feels it so very deep in her bones, this unyielding, sinking pull. She hasn't felt that since--

Emma is lost and Henry is lost and Regina just smiles sadly in the damp, dark bunk and runs her fingers through Emma's hair, because for once in her life she is exactly where she needs to be.

For once in her life, she can put the pieces back together.

"Henry used to climb my apple tree when he was about six years old," Regina murmurs. "Actually, he'd climb anything with a low-hanging limb. I called him _monito_ , my little monkey, and he absolutely hated it," she sniffs. "Anyway."

Emma folds her hand slowly into Regina's.

"I can't tell you how many times he nearly gave me a heart attack, he'd climb so high, so fast. Marya down at the fire station can attest to this."

Emma laughs, wetly.

"But he always found his way back down again. Always. Never a scratch. And I...only just realized this, because I kept him too close and I never really realized how capable he was. Not until _you_ , Emma, because you two are alike in only the best ways."

Still Emma says nothing, but an ever-restless something inside her chest begins to settle, responding to Regina's words, to her touch, her voice.

"And Emma," Regina says quietly, listening to Emma's breath even out once again, "none of us are alone anymore."

 

 

 

To Regina, anger makes the most sense. It is what fuels her own magic, it is what has fueled her _everything_. She knows it can produce the most powerful results (oh, she _knows_ it).

She also knows, now, that she cannot teach this to Emma. She can’t teach this to Henry. She can barely hold onto it herself. Regina doesn't know how she’s going to show Emma how to understand her magic without it, but she has to try (if she darkened herself with magic, maybe she can un-darken herself with magic, too).

Regina takes in a deep breath. She knows where this needs to end, but she doesn't know where to start, exactly. Somehow this seems appropriate:

“Close your eyes.”

Emma does.

Regina tilts her chin up, traces the lines of Emma’s face with a steady gaze. She could make Emma angry -- mechanical, stinging remarks, and she’s still good at that (it is highly likely that she always will be), it would be so easy. It would probably even work.  


Regina shakes her head though, clears those thoughts away. It wouldn't be true, it would lack conviction. She won't do that to Emma anymore. Emma is sacrosanct. “Magic is about visualization. It’s about emotion.”

Emma’s brows pinch together. “Okay,” she says uncertainly.

“Think about Henry,” Regina tells her, because she knows Emma’s magic must connect to her through love. It’s what she’s made of, after all.

“I've done nothing _but_ think about Henry for weeks now, Regina,” Emma mumbles.

Regina heaves the barest of sighs. This is becoming awfully rote, but in the most heartbreaking way. More even than waking up in King Leopold’s castle every day for ten years, most even than waking up in Storybrooke every day for twenty-eight. “Yes, I know.”

Emma opens her eyes. “Does any of what Gold said even make sense to you? Do you know what you’re doing?”

Swallowing, Regina replies, “Yes, sort of.” And then, “Do _you_?”

Emma drops her shoulders. She begins to pace again, running her hands through her long, long hair. “No clue. I want to believe that you and Gold know what you’re doing but-- we’re just sitting around this ship having all these goddamn feelings circles that have nothing to do with actually _saving_ him--”

Emma groans low in her throat, throws a half-hearted fist into the ship’s wall.

"I'm the _savior_ ," she murmurs, disappointed.

Regina watches silently. She watches and she knows she needs to find the thing that will ground Emma, clear her head, show her her power. Give her the confidence she needs. Make her understand.

She watches and then remembers, _you see now why it has to be you -- it’s been you since the beginning. It’s been you and Emma._

(She thinks, wants to tell Emma, that this has _everything_ to do with saving Henry, with saving them all.)

They were already here, weeks ago, Emma pacing and Regina placating. But this time, inside of Regina, something else starts to bend. Something begins to glow again, like the night Emma and Regina locked gazes and thought _family_ at the same time, and Emma confessed that she felt something when Regina got too close.

It doesn't take much, it hardly takes anything at all. Just these memories from that night, Rumple’s words, and this feeling. For the first time in what feels like half a century, for the first time since she looked into Daniel’s eyes and _understood_ , Regina's whole face blossoms into an untethered smile. 

Emma, sighing in the corner, catches sight of Regina's face and falls silent. “What--?”

“Come here,” Regina orders, still smiling. “Just come here.” 

As Emma draws nearer, Regina takes her hand. “Remember last night when I told you about Henry climbing the apple tree?”

Emma nods. Regina is pulling her across the bunk, and her hand is so warm and sure, and Emma feels her stomach flip because now Regina is pushing her down to sit on the edge of the bed, moving to kneel in front of her.

“Worrying isn't going to help anything right now," Regina tells Emma, eyes dark and wide as they look up at her. "He’s your son. He’s a fighter. He’s okay. He’s waiting for us. Put that worry and frustration aside just for a moment, alright?”

“Our son,” Emma whispers the correction, but she nods her acquiescence.

Regina smiles again and she doesn't even blink, doesn't even waver, and Emma's thoughts all tumble away. “And remember when I told you that Neverland isn't a place people like us can cross into without help?”

Emma nods again. One of Regina’s hands is still in her own, and the other has drifted to a thigh as she lingers close.

“I wasn't lying. But we've been helping one another. You noticed that the horizon was getting brighter? That's why. It's working.”

Emma breathes in, breathes out. Since coming to feel the way she does about Regina, since coming to understand and trust her, Emma has found that nothing calms her quite like her son's mother’s voice, her hands, that brutal fearlessness that permeates her every cell.

Regina keeps her eyes on Emma. Softly, gradually, her fingers begin to wander across, up, down Emma’s skin. “You also noticed that you can feel my magic. Can you feel anything else?”

So carefully, Emma closes her eyes once more. She wants to touch Regina back. She wants to hear her voice again. “I can,” she says, slowly.

“Describe it.”

Those are Regina’s fingernails cresting her knee, Regina’s lips brushing the inside of her wrist, and Emma just huffs out a breath and says, “Hot.”

Regina nods, though Emma can’t see it. “Warmer. What else?”

Something happens now: Emma’s skin starts to hum, her heart starts to thud and shudder and yawn open. Wider and wider, and everything starts to blur white and black and red, and she feels… “Breathless,” she murmurs, and it’s crazy but she swears she can feel every curve and slope of Regina, every impulse, every sensation, without even reaching out to touch her, without having ever touched her before. She can feel an energy inside her own body she didn't know she had. Her tongue feels heavy with the taste of apples, ozone, fire.

Regina bows her head. She can feel every bit as much as Emma can. She has been feeling it for a while. And Emma isn’t running away this time (her fingers grasp Regina’s tightly). 

“This is the most powerful magic of all,” Regina says, quietly. “This is what we’ve needed.”

Eyes still closed, Emma replies, shakily, “It--It's not so bad. I mean, it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. Not that I thought it would be bad, I mean, I was just scared--not of _you_ ,” she is quick to defend, valiantly attempting to subdue the trembling. “Magic. I mean I--I was obviously a little scared of you and I did hate you for awhile there, but I’m p--pretty sure these last few days have gotten us way past that--”

"Emma," Regina interrupts softly. "It's alright. I'm scared, too."

This time when Regina kisses Emma, Emma is already reaching for her.

 

 

 

 

“Your mom tried to take my heart at Lake Nostos. Did I ever tell you that?”

Regina furrows her brows; she raises her head from Emma’s chest.

“She couldn’t do it though. She tried. I could feel her hand close around it but she couldn’t rip it out.”

Regina’s own heart starts to careen and she feels slightly dizzy, has to shut her eyes, has to press her palm closer against Emma’s breastbone. “How is that possible?” She whispers. Her mother had never come across a heart she couldn’t simply steal, or crush (Daniel, Daniel, Daniel -- this will never be any less, just further away).

Regina herself had never, either.

“I don’t know,” Emma says. “Maybe...maybe because it was meant for someone else.”

(It still scares Emma, all the darkness it takes to steal a heart from a living thing, to crush it or control it like Regina had done over and over and over again. But Emma is no stranger to darkness, and maybe that’s the difference. You do what you do to survive, to protect your own, to keep safe your heart.)

"Maybe because love is strength, I guess," Emma adds, because she thinks she understands now.

Regina curls her nails into Emma’s skin protectively; the sigh it elicits sings right through her. She can feel her body tuning itself to Emma, binding, and she knows that this magic is the kind that can heal. This magic came at the price of Regina’s vengeance and Emma’s fear and this is the magic she and Emma have needed their whole lives long.

Emma pulls Regina closer, slowly begins to unwind. She curves herself around Regina, bends and kisses and sighs and lets herself start to love. The salt-stiff sheets rustle beneath them like wings taking flight.

 

 

 

“Hook said we should hit land in a few hours,” Snow tells David. “There’s nothing we can do in the meantime. Let them rest, honey.”

David paces. And paces some more. “This is good,” he says at length, looks over to Snow. “Right? It’s not a trick?”

Snow smiles. She sets down the pocket knife and half-sharpened arrow, and gestures for David to sit beside her. “You and Emma, I swear. I’m surprised you two haven’t burned a hole into the deck with all that pacing.”

David sighs.

Snow presses a gentle hand between his shoulder blades. “David,” she says softly. “It’s not a trick. We’ll get to Neverland, we’ll rescue Henry, we’ll go home, and everything will finally be _over_. We can just...try to be a family.”

“How do you know for sure?”

Snow pauses in thought. “Regina has more love in her heart than most people have in their whole bodies. I’ve always known that.”

David smiles hesitantly. “She’s done a lot to harm us, lest you forget.”

“I did a lot to harm her,” Snow reminds him. “I was supposed to be her family, and I was arrogant and selfish instead. I’ve been those things for too long.”

Charming takes Snow’s hand. Snow thinks about Regina lingering at Emma’s side all these long, long weeks, and about Emma lingering at Regina’s side, about Henry and Storybrooke and home and family, family, family.  


She doesn't need to understand everything that’s happened. She just needs to trust, and let everything else go.

They’re almost to Neverland. Dawn broke this morning for the first time in weeks, and Snow recognizes that kind of magic when she sees it. She's not going to make the same mistake. She's going to do all she can to make it right this time.  


“In the meantime,” Snow smiles at her husband, “you can help me gather some more gull feathers for these arrows."

 

 

 

Hook offers to stay. 

“You can’t just _leave_ Neverland, loves,” he reminds Emma and Regina again just before they reach the shore. “You’ll need a diversion at the very least. I’ll keep Pan distracted while you lot escape. I know how he thinks.”

“I can help,” Rumple offers. “I’m quite an effective manipulator.”

Regina glances to Emma. Emma looks anxious, stubborn, with a hint of surprise. Their continued loyalty is still a shock to Regina, too, but Emma isn’t nearly as skilled at withholding expressions of any sort. This morning she’d risen from the bunk to gawk at the sunrise peeping in from beyond the hold’s small dirty windows before swinging around open-mouthed and wide-eyed to exclaim, “holy _shit_ \- did we make that happen?”

Turning to Regina now, Emma looks worried again. “What do we do?”

Regina glances at all three of them in turn, thinking. Finally she decides, “We leave no one behind. It’s what Henry would do.”

While Hook breathes out in exasperation, Emma finds Regina’s hand.

“We’ll find a way,” Regina assures them. “We have a hell of a lot more to hit them with now than either of you ever did then.”

And that, they all know, is a fair, fair point.

 

 

 

They’re gathering weapons and wits when Snow tugs gently on Emma’s arm.

“Thank you,” she whispers into the soft yellow of Emma’s hair. “Thank you.”

She’s looking at Regina over Emma’s shoulder as she says it, though, and Emma isn’t even sure what the hug is for. She gives Emma one last squeeze before releasing, nudging her daughter back in Regina’s direction.

Regina’s eyes look wet and beautiful and neither of them are smiling but their hearts feel strong and light and ready.

 

 

 

It’s still strange, how comforting the rocking of Hook’s ship has become to all of them.

When Henry wakes, it’s with sleepy eyes and a shy, firebright smile that obliterates Regina’s whole heart all over again (Emma catches sight of her out of the corner of her eye and she's breathless all over again --because of Regina’s love, Regina’s heart, because of Henry, because of Regina).

He’s safe but shaken and they won’t know how badly until weeks, months, years from now. But both of his mothers know now that you can come back from anything as long as you’re still breathing.

They bring him what food they can, fish and rice and weak tea with dried lemon and Regina won’t leave his side. She keeps her hand at his back, his forehead, his arm. Emma keeps hers on Regina.

 

 

 

Henry weaves in and out of consciousness. He hears his moms’ voices when he wakes and they flutter in and out of his dreams like faceless guardians with wings. He doesn’t know what they’re talking about but the tones are love and comfort and home and it doesn’t even occur to him until much, much later that they’re still supposed to hate one another, aren’t they?

Once, he blinks awake and stays with them for awhile.

“Kid, I can’t even tell you how much ass your mom kicked back on that island.”

Regina narrows her eyes, but Henry’s smile is so firebright that she can’t keep them that way.

“I know,” he says. 

“Miss Swan helped,” Regina says begrudgingly.

“I did,” Emma supplies eagerly. “I did help.”

“Everyone did,” Regina tells Henry.

Something, some look, some feeling, passes between his mothers now and it’s a something that Henry doesn’t quite understand yet in his mind, but that doesn’t bother him, because it’s a something that his small heart has always understood. They were probably never supposed to hate each other anyway, he thinks, before drifting off once again. They were meant to save each other.

 

 

 

Regina had, under slight duress, agreed to keep Rumple’s letter with her in case things had gone pear shaped.

“Deliver it to Belle if I can’t,” Rumple had requested, his eyes never leaving hers. “Please.” 

Regina hadn’t had it in her to do anything but take the letter from him and nod.

It sits now, neatly folded, on the stool beside them.

Emma reaches out for it. “Guess we can give this back to him.”

“Guess we can.”

“First thing in the morning,” Emma yawns and leans her head against Regina’s shoulder.

It feels foreign, but Regina smiles at the thought of morning, at the thought of waking up tomorrow and perhaps the next day and the next after that without a heart that feels like iron, that feels like the deepest and darkest spot in a deep and dark ocean.

She smiles at the thought of waking up to Emma. To Henry.

“I’m ready for some more mornings,” Emma mumbles against her. “It’s been a damn long night out here.” She trails her hand down Regina’s arm. “I still don’t know much about magic -- it’s not like, gonna reverse itself, right?”

“The light? No. I think maybe it’s here to stay this time.”

Emma closes her eyes. Rests. Regina tangles a yellow lock between her fingers. “Yeah,” Emma says. “I think so too.”

 

 

 

\---


End file.
